The Effect Of Fertility On Gender Income Gap And Female Utility

In recent years,the gender income gap in China has been continuously widening.The widening gender income gap is not conducive to family harmony,social stability or sustainable development.Previous studies have focused on factors such as human capital,job involvement,gender discrimination and gender occupational segregation to explain the gender pay gap.This paper tries to focus on fertility,explain the causes of gender income gap and explore the impact of fertility on gender income gap.In addition,this paper further compared the changes of women’s life satisfaction under different reproductive status and labor participation status,explored the utility changes of women with different human capital levels under different employment status after childbirth,and proposed relevant policy suggestions to increase women’s welfare and narrow the gender gap.This paper uses the tracking data of CFPS from Peking University from 2010 to 2018,uses the fixed effect model and conducts regression analysis on the sample,proving that childbirth is an important reason for the widening of the gender income gap between men and women,and having children will lead to a decline of 21.01% in women’s annual income.Then,regression comparison was conducted among the whole sample,the employed sample and the employed sample in the management position,to explore the influence path of fertility on gender income gap.Empirical results show that the difference in career promotion is an important reason for the widening of gender income gap.Compared with men,women have fewer opportunities to be promoted to management positions because of having children,and management positions are paid more than ordinary positions,so women’s income decreases and the gender pay gap widens.The above 2research results confirm the causal impact of fertility on the gender income gap and its impact path.Finally,this paper indirectly measures the utility change of female employment before and after childbirth through the index of "self-life satisfaction",so as to explore the selection mechanism of female labor participation after childbirth.The results showed that the difference in women’s utility levels was due to their choice of employment after childbirth.For less-educated women,dropping out of the labor market after having a child increases their life satisfaction,suggesting that they voluntarily choose to give up their jobs to take care of their families after having a child.For highly educated women,staying out of the workforce after having a child reduces their life satisfaction,suggesting that this group is more likely to stay in the workforce after having a child.Based on the above research,this paper believes that we should pay attention to the change of women’s utility,put forward corresponding policy Suggestions,fully respect women’s right of free choice,and protect their rights and interests.For women who return to their families after childbirth,their life satisfaction can be improved only by ensuring their rights and status in marriage and family life and helping them better raise their children.For women who continue to be employed after having children,only by safeguarding the legal rights of professional women at work and eliminating gender discrimination in career promotion can they be better engaged in their work and obtain more income,so as to solve the gender income gap.